The Personal God

[Tariki]

Whoops! Sorry, Tariki, you're right!

It was VERY easy to miss amid the verbiage......

Oxford Dictionary defines it as 'a human being regarded as an individual'.

Boethius' classic definition "an individual substance (in the philosophical sense) of a rational (that is able to reason and reflect) nature" might do as a starting point, as long as we look at it from a pre-scientific (and thus not artificially narrowed) reasoning?

I like the Thomist idea of person as something intrinsically active, something self-manifesting, something self-communicative, through relationality.

Person as a rational, being-in-itself, a being-for-itself, and a being-in-relation.

Yes, I think "being-in-relation" is good. Merton spoke of the "self known only to God", which he elsewhere identified with the true self. I may be wrong but I understand him as saying that such a self is unknown to us also, this because he was wary of the the arising of "the spiritual ambition and self-complacency which aim to establish the ego in spiritual glory". So, that said, in relationship we maybe get some sort of handle on ourselves to work with?

 

[Paladin]

Thomas, Tariki, I'm totally loving this conversation